


The Truth About the Rain

by satin_doll



Series: The Bee Saga [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Part Three of The Bee Saga, Strong Trigger Warning Please Take Heed, TW: Baby death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 18:49:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8589667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/satin_doll/pseuds/satin_doll
Summary: If you are triggered by or overly sensitive to the issue of infant death, please heed the warning!You can blame this on OhAine because she caught that one word in Meeting the Bees and her breath hitched. This is for her.It's also for MizJoely, simply because she's astonishing.And for Icecat62, because she is always there, always, with support for the writers in the Sherlolly community. Thank you!(It's also for me, because I needed to get it out.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OhAine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhAine/gifts), [MizJoely](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MizJoely/gifts), [Icecat62](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icecat62/gifts).



> If you are triggered by or overly sensitive to the issue of infant death, please heed the warning!
> 
> You can blame this on OhAine because she caught that one word in Meeting the Bees and her breath hitched. 
> 
> This is for her.
> 
> It's also for MizJoely, simply because she's astonishing.
> 
> And for Icecat62, because she is always there, always, with support for the writers in the Sherlolly community. Thank you!
> 
> (It's also for me, because I needed to get it out.)

_And the truth about the rain_

_Is how it falls, how it falls, how it falls._

How does it happen, he thinks, how do events conspire in such a way that what is so joyful in one moment turns monstrous in the next? She was laughing. He sees it all so clearly, replaying on its endless loop in his recalcitrant brain. She laughed as she ran toward him, answering his smile, radiant with love, happiness, plans for the future. The next instant she was lying in the street, broken, the future leaking onto the pavement with her blood. 

She survived. The life she carried inside her did not. Both of them wear their grief like a cloak of silence, unable to share it, as if doing so would brand it on their bodies, hearts, and souls forever. 

*****

He steps through the door, bringing the cold in with him. He doesn’t have the strength to walk up the stairs, so he sits on the bottom step, folds himself up around the empty, aching hole in his middle. Gasps like sobs escape him but there are no tears. Molly has wept enough for both of them, and he is dry inside, cold and desolate like a desert at night, all windswept sand and emptiness.

Mrs. Hudson finds him there hours later, staring at his hands clenched between his knees, shivering. For once she is silent, sitting beside him, simply stroking his hair with one hand while she clutches his arm with the other. After a while he raises his head and looks at her, turns slightly, leans and rests his forehead against her shoulder. 

“I don’t know what to do for her,” he mumbles, and shivers again. 

Mrs. Hudson nods, leans her head against his, gently pats his arm. 

“I know, dear, I know. You don’t have to do anything,” she whispers. “Just be there with her.”

“She doesn’t want me there. I think...I think she blames me.” 

Mrs. Hudson pulls away, turns to face him, her own distress clear in her watery eyes, in the worried frown, in her stern words. “That’s not true, Sherlock! She doesn’t blame you at all, she’s just…” She pauses, sniffs a little. “She needs time, you both need time. It will take a while to get...to get past the worst of it.” 

She relents, her shoulders drop, she clutches his arm again. Finally she stands, grabs one of his hands, pulls, trying to get him up. “Come and let me fix you a cuppa, you need warming up.”

He reluctantly lets her pull him to his feet, follows her into her small flat. She seats him at her little table and bustles about with the kettle and pot, noisily setting cups and sugar and milk on the table in front of him. He still wears his coat and scarf, has no idea what he did with his gloves.

Thoughts chase each other around in his head, noisy birds, none of them able to light long enough for him to make sense of them. He left Molly staring out the window of her room into the fading grey of the afternoon, gone to somewhere in her head. She couldn’t - wouldn’t? - speak to him, just stared out the window with those bleak eyes leaking tears until he couldn’t stand it anymore and escaped into the cold grey light himself. 

The pain comes in waves, pulling him under their roiling surface, squeezing the breath from his lungs until he thinks he will surely die, then tossing him again into the cruel light, which pains him just as much. His first inclination, always, is to reach for her, to hold on to her tightly - his anchor, his fixed point of safety in this world. 

But she isn’t there. She is awash in her own pain, distantly drowning in her own unbearable anguish, and he can’t reach her. 

The helplessness - against his own hurt, against hers - fills him with rage, but it too sinks with impotence into the overwhelming pain. 

His thoughts are incoherent jumbles, fragments of stupid rationality warring with the irrationality of happenstance. A useless litany of what ifs, if onlys, stubbornly playing out their silly fantasy lives, tumbling over the straight facts: Molly was critically injured, their baby is dead. Nothing can change that. He almost lost them both. In a sense, the way things stand, he did. She won’t let him in now, has chosen to hold on to her pain and grief instead of him. He has no idea which loss grieves him more at this point. He has no idea if she will ever turn to him again. 

All this swirls like a hurricane in his head, while he watches Mrs. Hudson putter in her tiny kitchen, while he waits for the superficial comfort of tea, which he knows will cloy in his mouth and make him gag. 

*****

When he finally pulls himself up the stairs, he finds John waiting for him in the dark. Sherlock ignores him, stands just inside the doorway as if he’s suddenly found himself in the wrong flat and doesn’t know where to go next. 

John says nothing, only watches carefully as Sherlock glances absently around the room, looking lost. John knows there is nothing he can do. Sherlock will not accept comforting, not yet. The loss of the baby was bad enough; being unable to connect with Molly, John knows, has compounded it all a hundred times for Sherlock. John has had his own share of grief in his life, has dealt often with the grief of others. He knows many of the ways it can manifest, is familiar with much of the behavior. 

But this is Sherlock Holmes. There will be nothing “normal” or “usual” about his reactions - regardless of the universal circumstances.

Sherlock stands there staring into the dark flat, until suddenly he is trembling from head to foot, shaking so hard his coat wavers with it, and his hands clench at his sides. John closes the distance between them quickly, grabs Sherlock in a fierce hug, and the dam breaks. Sherlock’s body goes limp, and his knees buckle. John eases his friend’s lanky body down to the floor, and the first huge sob from Sherlock sounds like a scream.

John holds Sherlock tightly, pulls his head to his shoulder, his own tears dropping onto Sherlock’s dark curls. They sit in the dark, crying, rocking, clinging to each other. John murmurs through his tears; Sherlock shudders and heaves, choking on wracking sobs, his hands desperately clutching John’s shirt.

*****

The hospital room is dim late at night. Molly can still hear the nurses in the hall, going about their business. It’s a distant, small hum of activity; it doesn’t intrude on the blank greyness in which she’s cocooned. Nothing intrudes on it. 

She’s been numb for weeks now, it seems. It could be weeks. It could be months. She has no way of knowing, no way to measure time in this featureless limbo in which she’s hiding. Her eyes are open. She has slipped in and out of sleep - at least she assumes it’s sleep, a kind of darker grey in which everything fades a bit more - since she’s been here. She knows where she is, but any feeling she has about it has been held at bay by her cocoon of refuge, the dull nothingness to which she fled from the pain. 

Molly knows what she’s doing. She’s aware of everything that’s happened, and all the reaction to it. She’s endured the fuss surrounding her physical mending, the words and tears of those who’ve come to see her. She’s even endured Sherlock’s desperate attempts to reach her, and she’s sorry for him, sorry she can’t respond, to his pain, to his loss. Her own loss and pain are too great; she’s fled here because if she lets them in, allows herself to feel, she will become so broken that she would not survive another minute. They would devour her in an instant. So she hides inside this grey, blank, featureless, unfeeling limbo. The rest of the world will just have to cope on its own, without her.

She still cries. The tears leak from her eyes; she has no control over them. She’s been crying since she woke the first time from surgery. One would think she would have simply dried up long ago. But the tears still come and she’s given up trying to stop them; she’s given up just about everything. 

For the first time, she has a glimmer of understanding _why_ Sherlock blocked himself from feeling and emotion so very hard, for so very long. She doesn’t want to feel anything ever again.

*****

Three in the morning begins the Witching Hour. Between three and four a.m., the world is most still, most quiet, the veil between our everyday waking world and all other worlds is thinnest and most fragile. It’s the hour when sleep is deepest, for those who sleep, and when dreams are most potent. It is also the hour, for those who don’t sleep, when loneliness is most deadly. It seems to stretch on and on, longer than all the other hours, and all our demons are unleashed to run rampant through our hearts and souls. 

Sherlock had been alone for most of his life. He had grown to know this aloneness so intimately, it had become his constant companion, and, he had thought, his ally, his strength. When the people he was with most often had been threatened, he had found this to be a lie. The idea of living without John, Mrs. Hudson, even Lestrade, had pulled him into a new truth: his friends - for that is what they were, _friends_ \- were his true allies, and his real strength. And the one friend, quiet, nearly invisible, that was most important, the one that nobody saw, the one who was most constant throughout his miserable behavior, through the ups and downs of his life, the one who _saw_ him most clearly, was Molly Hooper. 

That she loved him beyond reason had stupefied him; it had turned him around and given him a perspective, a view of possibilities, he had never encountered before. It had taken him years to understand how much he relied on her: Her gentleness, her ability, her intelligence, her perception - even her awkwardness and lack of social grace - had become so interwoven into his world that he had taken them for granted, had seen them as a constant that was simply _always_ _there,_ like trees and rocks and buildings and air. The realisation had stunned him, and he had begun to look at her, really look at her, with different eyes. 

He had found her beautiful. More beautiful than anyone he’d ever known. Their beginning was fraught with missteps and mistakes, but he - being Sherlock - hadn’t given up. The result was a relationship he’d never believed could exist, a tie he’d never even considered with another human being, and one he would die before relinquishing. He turned to her for everything; every thought, every breath, came through her first in his heart, and life without her became impossible to imagine.

Seeing her lying twisted and bloody on the pavement, faced with the idea of her _not_ _being_ , a piece of his heart had broken away, a small piece that became frozen and apart, so cold it seemed larger than it was, as if it took up more space than it had a right to. This part was reserved for retreat, where he would go forever, if Molly ceased to be.

She hasn’t ceased to be, at least not physically, but she has, for all intents and purposes, gone away from him, and he is lost without her, that frozen piece of his heart calling to him, using his newfound fear of the old aloneness to pull him away from all comfort.

*****

Exhaustion finally claims him, sweeps him clear of everything but the need to rest, and he slowly pulls himself free from John’s embrace, sits up. He rubs his hands over his wet face, tries to breathe around the tight band constricting his chest. He won’t look at John, stares at the floor. Silent. 

John lets him go. He doesn’t ask Sherlock if he’s all right; he knows Sherlock is far from all right. So he sits back on his heels and waits. Despite their differences in so many areas, John does trust Sherlock, at least in the parts of their lives that are the same: loyalty, care for friends (even when it manifests so differently), love for the incredible women in their lives. He trusts Sherlock to let him know, in some way, when he needs help. All he can do is be there when the request comes; he knows Sherlock would do the same for him. 

Sherlock slowly gets to his knees, then to his feet. He sways there for a moment, then turns and walks through the kitchen, down the hall to his bedroom. He leaves the door ajar. 

John sends a brief text to Mary, then goes and stretches out on the sofa, pulling the worn blanket from the sofa back to cover himself. He won’t leave Sherlock to be alone.

*****

There are phone calls, emails, texts. Everyone in England seems to know about the accident, about their loss. People come to the flat to check on Sherlock, to offer condolences. John meets them at the door, tells them Sherlock is trying to rest. Mary brings food, which largely goes untouched, and then spends her time with Mrs. Hudson downstairs, leaving John with Sherlock. 

The air in the flat is heavy, dense, hard to breathe, and sometimes John wanders outside, simply walking back and forth in front of the building, sometimes sitting alone in Speedy’s over a cup of coffee which he rarely drinks. Weeks now they’ve kept to this routine, since Sherlock abandoned his efforts to reach Molly. 

Molly has been transferred, and now spends most of her time listening to psychiatrists and counsellors who, with the best of intentions, try to get her to rejoin the world of the living. She stares at them, looks out the window again. They all seem to think she’ll get over this, as if the fact that many people lose their babies under tragic circumstances and achieve some semblance of recovery from the tragedy should mean anything to her. 

They don’t understand. 

This was Sherlock’s baby. She isn’t able to have any more now. This was the only baby she ever wanted.

She didn’t want _children_. She only wanted this one, and only because it was his.

It isn’t as if either of them failed in any way. Their baby was taken from them. Their one chance, her _only_ chance it turns out, to have part of _him_ bloom inside her, take root and grow and become a living emblem of something so incredible and wondrous as the two of them together - and now she can’t bear to see him, to see the pain in his eyes, hear his voice hoarse with grief. She can’t bear his loss and her own together.

Whenever the awful nature of this twists its way into her awareness, she flees again into her grey cocoon, embraces the safe numbness of her personal limbo, sits and stares out the window at nothing.

*****

“Molly has always been so strong. I don’t understand it. I would have thought she would be the one to see Sherlock through something like this…”

Mrs. Hudson moves her cup around on the table, toys with the spoon, touches the sugar bowl, as if she thinks one of these familiar objects can give her an answer. She and Mary spend hours at this table, or sitting in the lounge in front of the telly, or fixing food that no one eats. Sherlock and Molly as a couple had become a wondrous sun and all the rest of them planets orbiting around them. Now they’re flung loose to wander pathless, and all of them are at a loss as to how to find their way. The light has gone out.

It takes another baby to put them all back together again.

*****

Mary mourns in a very special way, with a view slightly different from the others. She is in a special place, waiting for her own baby to make her appearance. The deep sadness she feels over her friends’ loss is mixed with gratitude for her own good fortune. She can’t imagine what Molly must feel, tries hard _not_ to imagine it. She had so looked forward to sharing both her baby’s birth and Molly’s pregnancy. Now she sits with her hands on her belly, giving thanks while fending off more tears for her friend.

She knows John is in a similar situation, knows how hard it is for him to mourn with Sherlock and Molly while still feeling the joy of anticipation awaiting the birth of his own child. They share looks that say it all, hold each other through bouts of weeping for their friends. She doesn’t begrudge John the time he spends with Sherlock. Sherlock and Molly are precious to her, too. 

Sherlock visits Molly in the hospital, but he has given up trying to reach her. There is no talking, no sharing of news or recital of daily activities. He simply sits with her for a while, then kisses her on the cheek and leaves. After these visits, he is broken, silent, sits for long periods alone by the window, or stalks the streets for hours, a lonely ghost. He has asked Mary not to visit, thinking that it might upset Molly now to see Mary with her swollen belly. Mary thinks this is a mistake, but she is loathe to argue with him, so she stays away. 

On the day Sherlock refuses to go on his daily visit to Molly, Mary has had enough. 

“Sherlock, she needs to see you. Even if she doesn’t respond, just having you there is important. You can’t just not go!”

Sherlock simply stares through her, without replying, turns on his heel and retreats to his bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Mary closes her eyes, bites her lip, sighs. Then she squares her shoulders, grabs her coat, and marches downstairs, where John is having a cup of tea with Mrs. Hudson. She smiles at them both, gives John a kiss, announces she going out. As John rises to accompany her, she shakes her head, says she needs some time alone, and at John’s worried look, reassures him that she’s fine, she just needs to get some air and will walk a bit. 

“I’ll be fine, John, I have my phone. Nothing is going to happen.” She waves and scurries out the door, putting on her coat. 

But at the corner she hails a taxi and tells the driver to take her to the hospital. She assures the driver that no, she is NOT about to give birth, smiles at him, settles into the seat of the cab. As she stares out the window at the afternoon traffic, her resolution grows. She is certain she’s doing the right thing.

*****

It isn’t difficult for Mary to find scrubs that will fit over her huge belly, nor is it difficult for her to finagle her way (thanks to a not-so-diligent orderly) past the locked door of the ward. She is used to escapades like this; her past stands her in good stead at times, and once these tricks are learned they become second nature. She wends her way down the hall to the day room. Not hard to spot Molly, either. Sherlock had described perfectly Molly’s preferred place by the window, where someone has dragged a semi-comfortable chair. Mary stands still for a moment, watching the movement in the room, watching Molly’s achingly sad face as she stares at nothing, then slowly works her way across the floor. She is not accosted by anyone, either orderly or patient. 

She stands by Molly’s chair, quietly, taking in Molly’s appearance. Molly’s usually lustrous hair is combed and pulled back in its ponytail. It is clean but is dry and dull looking. She is dressed in jeans and a rust-colored jumper, mocassins on her feet. She is too thin, her cheekbones too prominent; her pallor gives her an unreal, ghostly air. Her expression, while sad, is calm. Her cheeks are dry. She sits with her hands flat on the arms of the chair, her feet planted side by side. But she is not present. Her mind is far from this hospital day room, in some internal haven of her own making. The sorrowful, despairing look in her lovely eyes is agonising to see. 

Mary’s heart clenches, and she fights back tears. She wants so much to pull Molly into her arms and hold her, rock her and cry with her - comfort Molly should have had from Sherlock. To be fair, Sherlock tried, in the beginning, to do this. They should have comforted each other. But Molly was overwhelmed, and poor Sherlock did not know what to do for her. They’re coping the only way they can right now, Mary thinks, as she slowly sinks to her knees beside the chair. 

“Molly,” she says softly. “Molly, it’s me. It’s Mary.” She puts her hand ever so gently on Molly’s arm and waits but Molly is too far away to hear her. Mary’s fear is that Molly will drift too far away for them to ever reach her, that she will be lost to them forever. She takes Molly’s hand in hers, brings it to her cheek, kisses the back of it, strokes it with her fingers. She begins to speak to Molly about her own pregnancy, her plans for her own baby. As she does, she moves her hand up and down Molly’s arm, pausing once in a while to touch Molly’s hand. Molly blinks once or twice, slowly, but makes no other indication that she is aware Mary is there. Mary continues to talk quietly, imagining herself in a small boat, floating out on a still lake to where Molly waits on a small island. She keeps her hand in contact with Molly’s arm, as if Molly could guide her there.

After a while, Mary’s knees begin to ache and she has to stand. She raises herself awkwardly, a painful cramp in her belly as she straightens, and suddenly she is standing in a pool of water, her trousers and feet soaked. She stares down at herself incredulously. This cannot be happening, she thinks, and then is overcome with the odd urge to giggle. As she clamps her hands over her mouth, a bit more fluid runs down her leg, and suddenly there is no stopping it - she laughs outright. This is insane, she thinks. Of all the times and places to go into labor! She quickly looks around to see if anyone has noticed the enormously pregnant woman gushing water all over the floor of the day room, and when her eyes come back to Molly, her mouth falls open in shock.

Molly is staring at her. She watches, stunned, as Molly’s gaze travels down her body. Molly’s face is expressionless, but there is blessed awareness in her eyes, and Mary smiles at her just as she is seized by a fierce, hard contraction, and the smile warps into a grimace as she grabs her stomach. She breathes through the contraction, closing her eyes, and is startled when she opens them to see that Molly has turned in the chair to face her, her mouth working as she tries to speak.

Molly’s voice is breathy and hoarse; she is gripping the arm of the chair with both hands, so tightly her knuckles are white. All she seems to be able to say is Mary’s name.

“Mary? Mary…” Molly rasps, and begins to make small rocking movements, as if she’s not sure how to rise from the chair. Another contraction and Mary bends and grabs the back of the chair for support. Oh God, this _can’t_ be happening, she thinks, watching Molly while she slowly takes in a breath and lets it out again. The contractions are too strong and too close together. She should be in very early labor, but it feels almost close to transition. Inwardly she tells herself not to panic as a weight slides down her middle and presses hard against her pelvic floor. She tries to breathe but when the next contraction hits, her knees turn to jelly and she begins to sink to the floor, sliding down the side of the chair. 

And suddenly Molly is there at her side, pulling Mary’s arm around her shoulder and easing her down. Mary is dazed, fighting the intense pressure between her legs, gasping. There is no room for thoughts of other people around her, or why this is happening to her. All she can do is struggle to keep her baby from sliding onto the wet floor. 

Molly pulls the cushion from the chair and slides the edge of it under Mary’s hips. There is movement around them, confusion. There is shouting, pushing. Molly goes to work on Mary’s trousers, pulling them and Mary’s pants down around her knees, then her ankles, and finally off completely. An orderly stoops down beside Molly and tries to help and Molly growls and pushes him away. She quickly pulls off her jumper and folds it, putting it under Mary’s head. Then she scoots down to kneel between Mary’s legs. 

The baby’s head is crowning. Molly has never delivered a baby before, has only seen a delivery once during a rotation in med school. But she remembers what she’s read about delivery from the books she bought when she discovered she was pregnant. She leans forward, places a hand on Mary’s hard belly, and gathering all her strength croaks out the words. 

“Bear down, Mary, don’t push, just bear down.” She holds one hand close to Mary’s body, ready to catch the baby’s head.

She knows Mary will tear when the head comes out, but she has nothing to help soften the perineal tissue. When the next contraction comes, Mary raises her head, curls forward, and bears down, bracing her hands against the floor; there is a trickle of blood as the perineum tears slightly, along with oozes of other fluids, and suddenly the baby’s head is free. Molly cradles the head with one hand as it turns slightly, and in the next instant the body slips free, and she is holding a gasping, squalling infant in her hands. She quickly places the baby on Mary’s stomach and pulls Mary’s shirt up to cover it. She sits back on her heels, and stares at Mary holding her baby. 

Mary cries. She mumbles words, incoherent sentences, as she cradles her baby against her chest, her head raised awkwardly from Molly’s makeshift pillow. There are people around them now, nurses and orderlies, telling them that the doctor is here now, please stand back. Someone produces a blanket and covers mother and baby, and then there is the metallic rattle of a trolley. Mary is lifted, the baby still on her chest, and placed on the trolley, and wheeled away. 

The last thing Molly sees is that the baby and Mary are still connected by the umbilical cord. Then she gasps, and falls sideways, the room and milling people quickly fading away.

*****

The phone call leaves Sherlock shaking and weak, and he is fearful that he has misunderstood, fearful that he’ll find that nothing has changed when he reaches the hospital. He has a hard time grasping exactly what has happened. All he knows for sure is that John and Mary’s baby has arrived, in slightly odd circumstances. John is already on his way to the hospital. Sherlock’s hands tremble as he dresses, and he pauses occasionally to sit and try to make sense of what he’s been told. 

“Precipitous labor.” “Ms. Hooper is responding well.” “Mrs. Watson and the baby are fine.” The sentences are correct, but sound like babble; there is a disconnect between his ears and his brain and the confusion troubles him, pulls a mixture of hope, puzzlement and - oddly - anger from his gut.

He finishes dressing, wishes he had a cigarette or some whisky to brace himself. But he has no whisky or cigarettes, and no time for dawdling. He has to get to the hospital to see Molly.

*****

Breathe, he tells himself as he stands outside the hospital room. The anxiety grips him like a vise and he can’t remember a time he’s felt such trepidation. Molly is just the other side of this door, he thinks, but that thought is bereft of the delicious anticipation he’s always felt in the past. Molly, _his_ Molly, vanished when she was struck down in the street, losing their baby, losing herself in her anguish, losing _them_. Along with his grief, he has had to deal with rage - at a universe so cruel it would do this to them, at the constant intrusion of well-meaning but unwelcome strangers into his life and his pain...and at Molly for leaving him to face it all on his own. The intellectual understanding of her grief, of why she withdrew, is no match for the emotional demon that screams inside him at her abandonment of him. He has tried to quell it, done battle with it every day; he knows the demon’s face of rage is a mask, that underneath that mask, the demon’s real name is fear. But he has never been very good at feelings, even as Molly, as she was before this horror happened, tried her best to guide him. He’d thought he was making good progress. Now he thinks he’s failed.

Voices in the corridor behind him startle these thoughts away, and he draws himself up, slowly pushes the door open, steps inside. Molly is at the window and he feels the familiar leaden weight in his belly at the sight. He stands still and watches her for a moment and is surprised at the sudden sting and pressure of tears behind his eyes, the upwelling of such deep longing that it makes him gasp, and she turns at the sound. 

What he sees in her eyes frees the tears and he is suddenly weeping. He whispers her name and finds himself incapable of moving, so full of torment that it seems as if any movement at all will burst him open and flood the room, drowning them both. 

Molly watches him come apart, and all her own sadness is pushed aside as she goes to him, wraps herself around him, mumbling over and over, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” 

And for the first time in months, they are together.

*****

There is so much to say, so much to work through, that it seems they’ll never get it all out. But now, at least, they have the time and the willingness to accomplish the task. Forgiveness, Sherlock finds, is easier than he thought it would be. His own capacity for abandonment is no stranger to him, and accepting this, under the circumstances he finds it not so difficult to see that Molly was helpless against it. 

Gradually, they take up their life together. Molly continues to see a therapist, even manages to get Sherlock there at times for joint sessions. Their friends, at first walking on eggshells around them, slowly but surely resume their places in orbit around the sun that is Sherlock and Molly together, and while talking about what happened is still painful for all of them, the pain is wrapped in joy and love, and is not overwhelming. 

John so wanted to be furious about Mary’s little trick, but he is incapable of sustaining the anger in the face of the outcome. Their daughter, in spite of being born on the floor of a psych ward dayroom, surrounded by mental patients and tended by one of them, is miraculously normal and precious. He repeats the story to everyone he knows countless times, until eventually they only nod and smile and tune him out. 

Mary veers between deep gratitude - for her daughter, for Molly, for whatever inspired her to disobey Sherlock and fib to John - and wonder at the entire incident. Precipitous labor is uncommon, and no one knows exactly why it happened to her, although none of the usual reasons is cause for worry. She’ll just have to make sure preparations are in place should she become pregnant again, which she certainly plans on doing. Her relationship with Molly, already strong, is is now closer to sister, rather than friend. Molly is her champion, her hero.

Sherlock has learned the meaning of gratitude also, true gratitude, which he now thinks he never understood. He spends a small portion at the end of each day acknowledging it, listing in his head the many things for which he’s most grateful: his friends, who would stand with him against any threat, and willingly put up with all his stupid behaviors; his work, which he’s slowly learning to keep in perspective; his family - even Mycroft, who has exhibited an emotional life lately which before would have seemed not only odd but outrageous; and most especially, always, always, Molly, who is the single most important person on this earth and will be forever. 

Molly closes the door firmly on her grey limbo, locks it, and tosses away the key. She knows now that people don’t die from pain. They may die from what causes it; they can die trying to escape from it. But the pain itself isn’t what kills. She understands now that she can survive even the most horrible anguish, and that surviving it has made her stronger. Surviving it has made her able to deal with others’ pain without discomfort or the need to escape it, and she finds a depth of compassion blossoming in her that she’s never had before. She and Sherlock together can survive anything, and their special bond has proven unbreakable. What has emerged from their ordeal is nothing short of miraculous rebirth and renewal, of themselves and of their relationship and their steadfast commitment to each other. 

She will always be sad that she will never have Sherlock’s baby, and she sees that sadness echoed in his eyes from time to time. But being there for Mary’s delivery, watching that precious baby grow, has taken some of the sting away. She and Sherlock are godparents. They “borrow” little Miranda Watson often, lavish love on her as if she was theirs. It’s not the same as having her own, but she will look at the positives that have come from their loss. She has her work, which is now more valuable and meaningful. She has her friends, a collection of odd and beautiful people who are very much more family than friends, none of whom she would trade for anything. 

And she has Sherlock. 


End file.
